The Carer — Scott Nelson

Sometimes, less is more...

After maxing out his credit card in a San Francisco clip joint, Kiwi backpacker Malcolm McDonald returns to London homeless, friendless, unemployed and flat broke. Out of options in the middle of a bitter British winter, Mal takes on a live-in job looking after Florence Days, an octogenarian who talks to her wallpaper and doesn't get why her late husband is always late for dinner.

A story of patricide by proxy and the corrosive consequences of unbridled power, The Carer shows what happens when you lock up the sane with the insane, outsource your loved ones to people who don't love for them - and stay in the game too long.

Advance praise for The Carer

"Do you really want to be the oldest person in the nursing home? The Carer is a wake up call for anyone facing a dementia diagnosis - or who has elderly relatives requiring care.”
Georgia Howley, bestselling author of In the Garden and Switcher

“With elder abuse increasingly in the news, and against a backdrop of a rapidly aging population, this book calls time on our culture's drive to prolong life at all costs �" providing the strongest argument yet for quitting while you're still ahead.”
James Whitehead, author of Exit Zero

"The Carer contributes to the current �" and increasingly intense and high profile �" debates about our right-to-die and how we will cover the cost of our aging population's healthcare."
Jack Rider, author of Distant Sons

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sometime in 1993, New Zealander Scott Nelson purchased a one-way ticket to London and began using the city (including the City) as a base for six years of backpacking around five continents. Along the way, he worked as a travel, entertainment and business journalist; a pourer of pints, a salesman and as a live-in carer looking after elderly people with advanced dementia. Nowadays, he lives with his partner and young twins in Nova Scotia, where the Atlantic meets North America. Here, he works as a corporate writer and editor, web developer and epublishing consultant. The Carer is Scott's third book - and his first novel.

http://about.me/scott_nelson